36. But while different enquiries were taking place among them[185] a certain man who was also called Theodotus, a money-changer by trade, undertook to say that a certain Melchizedek was the greatest power, and that he was greater than Christ. After the image of whom they allege that Christ happened [to come]. And they like the Theodotians before mentioned say that Jesus was a man, and in the same words [declare] that the Christ descended upon Him.
p. 392. But the opinions[186] of Gnostics are varied, and we do not deem it worth while to recount in detail their foolish doctrines, composed of much absurdity and charged with blasphemy, the most respectable of which those Greeks who philosophized on the Divine have refuted. But one cause of the great conspiracy of these wicked ones was Nicolaus, one of the seven appointed to the diaconate by the Apostles.[187] He, having fallen away from the right doctrine, taught that it was indifferent how men lived and ate: whose disciples having waxed insolent, the Holy Spirit exposed in the Apocalypse as fornicators and eaters of things offered to idols.[188]
9. Cerdo and Lucian.[189]
37. But a certain Cerdo taking in like manner his starting-point from these [heretics] and from Simon, says that the p. 393. God announced by Moses and [the] Prophets was not the Father of Jesus Christ. For that this God was known, but the Father of the Christ unknowable; and that the first-named was [only] just, but the other, good. The doctrine of this [Cerdo] Marcion confirmed when he took in hand the Antitheses[190] and everything which seemed to him to speak against the Demiurge of all things. And so did Lucian his disciple.
10. Apelles.[191]
38. Now Apelles who [sprang] from among these men, says thus:—There is a certain good God as Marcion supposed; but he who created all things is [only] just; and there is a third [God] who spoke to Moses, and yet a fourth, a cause of evil. And he names these angels and speaks ill of the Law and the Prophets, deeming the Scriptures of human authorship and false. And he picks out of the Gospels and Epistles the things favourable to him. Yet he clings to the discourses of a certain Philumena as the manifestations[192] p. 394. of a prophetess. And he says that the Christ came down from the powers on high, i. e. from the Good One and was the son of that One, and was not begotten from a virgin, nor did He appear bodiless;[193] but that taking parts from every substance[194] of the All, He made a body, that is from hot and cold and wet and dry. And that in this body He lived unnoticed by the cosmic authorities during the time that He spent in the cosmos. And moreover that having been crucified[195] by the Jews He died, and after three days rose again and appeared to the disciples showing the marks of the nails and [the wound] in his side, and thereby convinced them that He existed and was not a phantom but was incarnate. The flesh [Apelles] says, which He showed, He gave back to the earth whence was its substance, and He desired nothing of others, but merely used [the flesh] for a season. He gave back to each its own, having loosed again the bond of the body, i. e. the hot to the hot, the cold to the cold, the wet to the wet and the dry to the dry,[196] and thus passed to the presence of the good Father, leaving the seed of life to the world to those who believe through the disciples.[197]
p. 395. 39. It seems to us that we have set forth sufficiently these things also. But since we have decided to leave unrefuted no doctrines taught by any [heretic], let us see what has been excogitated by the Docetae.
FOOTNOTES
[1] Of the Basilides with whose doctrines this book opens, little is known. While some would on slender grounds make him a Syrian, there is no doubt that he taught in Egypt and especially in Alexandria, where he seems to have steeped himself in Greek philosophy. This must have been during the reign of Hadrian and some time before the appearance of the far greater heresiarch Valentinus. If we could believe the testimony of Epiphanius, Basilides was a fellow-disciple with Satornilus, to be presently mentioned, of Menander, the immediate successor of Simon Magus; and, according to the more trustworthy witness of Clement of Alexandria (Strom., VII, 17), he himself claimed to be the disciple of Glaucias, “the interpreter” of St. Peter. He had a son Isidore who shared his teaching, and he wrote a treatise in twenty-four books on the Gospels which he called Exegetica. The sect that he founded, although never popular, lingered for some time in Egypt; but there is much probability in Matter’s conjecture (Hist. crit. du Gnost., 2nd ed., III, 36), that most of his followers became the hearers of Valentinus.
Our author’s account of Basilides’ doctrine at first sight differs so widely from that given by Irenæus and his copyists that it was for long supposed that the two accounts were irreconcilable. The late Prof. Hort, however, in his lucid article on the subject in the Dictionary of Christian Biography showed with much skill that this was not so, and that the Basilidian doctrine contained in our text is in all probability that of the Exegetica itself, while the teaching attributed to Basilides by Irenæus and others was the same doctrine largely corrupted by the inconsistent and incoherent superstitions which invariably attach themselves to any faith propagated in secret. The immediate source of Basilides’ own teaching cannot, up to the present time, be satisfactorily traced; but, although its coping-stone, the non-existent Deity, shows some likeness to the Buddhistic ideas which were at any rate known in the Alexandria of his time (Clem. Alex., Strom., I, 15), it is probable that among the relics of the ancient Egyptian religion, then almost extinct, something of the same idea might have been found. His obligation to the Stoic philosophy is well brought out by Hort; and he was doubtless versed in the dialectical methods of Aristotle, which, then as later, formed the universal equipment of the student of philosophy. Hippolytus’ theory that the ground-work of the Basilidian edifice is a conscious or unconscious borrowing from Aristotle derives no support from any Aristotelian writings known to us. Unlike other Gnostics, Basilides displays no animus towards the Jews beyond reducing their Deity to the Ruler of the Hebdomad, or lowest spiritual world, and he accepts as fully as possible the Divinity of Jesus and the authority of the New Testament. Of the Docetism attributed to him by Irenæus and others, there is here no trace, and the Bishop of Lyons’ statement on this point can only be explained by supposing that he here confused Basilides with some other heresiarch.